


keep holdin' onto me

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Engagement, JeanMarco Week, Long-Distance Relationship, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Minor Character Death, Moving In Together, Online Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-06 20:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of stories about a couple of kids who met online and never looked back.</p><p>Written for JeanMarco week on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. day 1: begin again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the jeanmarco week day 1 prompt begin again! loosely.  
> friday's supreme court ruling may or may not have happened on the same day my relationship turned long distance, sooo... here is some fluff about a ldr becoming not so long distance

It’s with an aching back and a splitting headache that Marco wakes up on Friday morning, the futon he’s just barely gotten used to the culprit for at least one of those problems. Either that or the stack of cardboard boxes filled and lined up perfectly along the wall.

It’s the boxes. It’s definitely the boxes.

The thought of coffee and Aleve is a tempting one, especially when a shift of the shoulders sends a shot of pain down his overworked back, but even more tempting is the thin blanket still draped over his body that smells of the evergreen and warm fabric softener that he usually only gets faint hints of in packages and letters, not nearly often enough firsthand.

Taking in a deep breath of the scent he’s come to recognize as his favorite in the world (possibly even ahead of pie baking in the oven and when you first walk into an art supply store, which is a pretty big deal), Marco reaches his arms out carefully to the other side of the futon, but his hands return to him with nothing but two fistfuls of blanket and a nose filled with the smell. He breathes it in for a moment, exhales any worry he’d normally have had about the empty side of the bed, and slowly lifts himself to his feet.

Distantly, the TV hums something not quite comprehensible through the walls, and the air outside of the last blanket left in the room has the lingering smell of eggs and hash browns, and already Marco can’t wait to see the face behind the closed bedroom door. He forgoes any formalities about folding the blanket, sliding it into one of the boxes along the wall, and instead pushes the door open and slips into the kitchen to try and sneak a peek before he’s caught himself.

Also the Keurig machine is still out there, and if there’s one thing that can make a bad back feel better, it’s naproxen washed down with caffeine. Or something.

There’s still a lukewarm-looking mishmash of scrambled something on the stove, whatever ingredients left in the fridge tossed in a pan with the last eggs and the bag of frozen potato shreds that didn’t have an expiration date but was probably past it anyway. Marco pokes at the hash with a spatula, takes a small bite, and shrugs when it doesn’t _seem_ like it will eat his stomach from the inside out. He keeps picking at cold potato and limp bell pepper as he tries to shuffle around the sparse kitchen for something to put coffee in without making too much of a racket, without getting caught quite yet.

Over the half wall between the kitchen and the living room, Marco watches the hunched-over figure sitting on the barren living room floor, knees pulled to their chest and hands busy doing something not quite able to be seen from behind. Blonde hair is still ruffled from sleep, and Marco is almost entirely sure that his t-shirt is on both inside out and backwards, but he allows himself a second to send the back of Jean’s messy head a dopey smile as the machine starts to spit his coffee into a small mixing bowl—the first thing he could find that hadn’t been packed yet.

Jean’s head whips around at the sound of the pouring coffee, hazel eyes wide for a second before his expression softens into something warmer. It takes approximately all of Marco’s self-control not to leap over the half wall and kiss him senseless.

“Morning, cute thing,” Marco drawls around half a mouthful of tepid scrambled egg. The machine finishes spewing his coffee, and he barely splashes some creamer into the bowl before his legs drag him into the living room to stand by his hunched-over boyfriend by their own volition. There are paper shreds around his feet, printed in bright colors and what Marco recognizes as a selfie they took with Mickey Mouse two years ago at Disneyland. “What’s got you up early?”

It’s only when he plants himself down on the worn carpet that he sees the tears glistening in the corners of Jean’s eyes, or the way his hand is trembling around the craft scissors gripped tight in his fingers.

“Jean?” Marco edges, putting aside the bowl of coffee and instead returning his hands to either side of his boyfriend’s face, catching an errant tear that slides down his cheek with a swipe of his thumb. Jean keens into the touch, pressing his lips to Marco’s palm, and that’s when the watery smile creeps over his face.

“Engagement announcements,” he says cryptically. His cheeks flare crimson under Marco’s palms, even more when Marco moves his hands to pick up one of the heart-shaped picture cutouts littered between them.

“Jean,” he says breathlessly, tracing the edges of the heart cut just around their faces. Something warm bubbles up in his chest that definitely isn’t coming from the coffee. “A-are you—”

Jean’s smile grows as he turns to the source of the noise Marco had heard before—his laptop on the floor, not the TV they’d packed up the night before, thank goodness.

“Baby, haven’t you heard yet?”

The laptop screen is absolutely _ablaze_ with rainbow flags, magenta and purple and blue flags, people crying, laughing, cheering…

And across the bottom of the video, the headline, _#LoveWins: the United States Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage in all 50 states_.

“Even Ohio,” comes Jean’s trembling voice. “ _Even Ohio_.”

The quiet sob muffled into Marco’s shoulder is what sends the first tear dripping down his own face. Jean, the king of keeping his emotions at bay, the man who’d held him together years back—before they were a _they_ —and continued to through six years’ worth of heartache and happiness, happily crying into his shoulder.

Marco curls himself around Jean’s shaking body, barely touched bowl of coffee be damned. He brushes his fingers through Jean’s bedhead, smooths the downy dark undercut beneath it into place, lets Jean kiss his cheek over and over until it’s smeared with the salt of both of their tears. And when they pull back, finally, it’s with earsplitting grins and puffy, red eyes.

“It figures,” Jean manages sarcasm somehow, even if it takes his teeth clamped over his lower lip as he pauses for the right words, “that the day I leave to live in California to begin again with you is the day we can get married here.”

Marco grins at him across the small gap between their bodies. “You know, you have a funny way of proposing that doesn’t include the words ‘will you marry me’ at all.”

Jean’s hands slap over his face without a second thought. “ _Goddamnit_ , I was hoping you wouldn’t wake up until I could figure out which box we packed the glue sticks into so we could toss these little shits in the mail on the way to the airport. Kinda ruined my plans to wake you with delivery waffles and _oop! what’s that, totally not a proposal written in Hershey’s syrup_.”

“I’m a ruiner, aren’t I?” Marco chuckles, snaking his arms over Jean’s shoulders and slowly, softly pressing their lips together in a sweet kiss. “You could always put a ring in those cold potatoes on the stove.”

“I don’t even have a _ring_ ,” Jean groans into his neck, ears flushing an embarrassed shade of crimson. “I was going to wait until we got all my stuff and settled into your apartment—”

“ _Our_ apartment,” Marco corrects, a small kiss to the exposed tip of a red ear punctuating the thought.

“Ours,” Jean smiles against his skin. “But I got a text from the neighbor the minute the ruling came out to turn the news on, and you were still asleep, and I was—” He pauses for breath, lifts his head once more. “I was too goddamned excited to wait a day longer.”

Marco’s voice is soft when he noses along Jean’s cheek, kisses and nuzzles left in his wake. His lips poise perfectly against the shell of Jean’s ear, and he whispers, “Ask me.”

“I have no ring. If you want one, we can just wa—”

“Don’t care,” Marco says. “Ask me.”

“Marco Bodt, resident dweeb, actual Bambi, only person in the world who doesn’t laugh at me when I cry over Disney movies—”

“Big Hero 6 is _genuinely_ heartbreaking.”

“It is, proposal ruiner.” A quick kiss is pressed to a soft cheek, and Jean soldiers on. “My best friend in the world, love of my entire stupid life, marry me and we’ll take over the United States with our gay-and-bi agenda. Supreme Court ordered.”

Without a ring, Jean’s hands idle for a moment, but he scoops a string of discarded scrap paper from the floor and pulls Marco’s palm into his lap. Half of Mickey Mouse’s disembodied head is wrapped around his ring finger before Marco can even tackle Jean backwards with a hysterically laughed, _“Yes.”_

When they stand back up, Marco wraps a printed copy of Jean’s horribly California-sunburnt arm around his _fiance’s_ finger, and it’s completely worth the affronted spluttering to see the sparkle in Jean’s eyes when he stares at the paper ring.

“What’s up with the announcements anyway?” Marco murmurs between kisses just minutes later, back pressed to the wall by Jean’s slighter body.

“When I graduated high school and college, my mom sent out like fifty of ‘em and I got a thousand bucks total from family members I’d never even _met_ before.” Another kiss against Marco’s jawline, another smile pressed into warm skin. “Maybe we’ll get enough money to get actual rings that won’t give us paper cuts.”

“Where’s the fun in _that_?” Marco snorts, wrapping his arms around Jean’s waist until he can pick him up, just a few inches, and spin him away from the wall, wriggling and cackling the entire time.

“You know,” Jean says, breathless from laughter, as he’s being set back down on the empty wood flooring. “We could get married _now_.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we have two hours until the movers get here to take the boxes, three until I’ve got to give the landlord the key back, and four until our plane leaves. I’m sure there’s a line at city hall, but—”

“ _Or_ ,” Marco interrupts his rambling, “we could wait a little while because your mother and sister will eat you alive if you get married without them at the wedding.”

“Okay, I give in. Mom and Hitch _might_ actually commit cannibalism over that,” Jean concedes. “But I know something we _could_ do with those two hours before the movers come.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

With some difficulty, Jean carries Marco back to the bedroom, tosses him back down on the futon, and their last moments in his old apartment are spent napping like there’s no tomorrow.


	2. day 2: electric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for prompt #2: electric!  
> takes place roughly 5 years before day 1 (also can be read separately but they're all the same verse so w/e w/e)
> 
> [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV9eZmDAx6k) is the song jean references and also the best thing to listen to if you live in southern california, it is raining, and you want to be a little shit

The storm rages outside of the window, drenching the city streets in slick water and fat droplets of rain that pound against the glass almost tauntingly. Like they’re sneering, _“haha, you were **supposed** to go to the beach today.”_

Safe to say that Jean’s first visit to Marco’s place isn’t going exactly as he expected it to.

“That song lied,” Jean grouses to his transparent reflection in the window.

“Song?” Marco’s sitting on an oversized beanbag in the corner because he’s a grown twenty-year-old, flipping through a photo book Jean had snagged him from an airport gift shop before he boarded the plane for LAX. Something about Marco wanting to see what it looked like where he lived, as much as Jean assured him that there was nothing interesting about Cleveland, Ohio.

“You know the one,” Jean murmurs over his shoulder. Marco still looks confused and _goddamnit_ , he’s going to make him sing. _“Seems it neeever raaains in Sooouthern Califooornia.”_

A blush makes its way across Marco’s pretty cheeks, and he buries his head into the book with a noise that’s half laugh and half whine. “Stop it, you’re _cute_.” He peeks up from behind the pages, dark eyes wide and blinking. “And by that I mean don’t stop because your voice is—it’s—really, _really_ cute.”

It’s been roughly a day since they met in person for the first time, and still neither can get past the fact that they’re _here_ , in the flesh, each staring across the room at the face they’d only seen through webcams and Facetime and selfies for a year.

To commemorate the occasion, Jean crosses the room in a few long strides and plants himself right atop Marco’s legs, shoving the book out of his hands and onto the scuffed wooden flooring of the bedroom.

“Hi,” he says when Marco’s finished his shocked spluttering.

“H-hi,” Marco manages in return. Carefully, he places a hand on either of Jean’s thighs, steadying him in his lap. He’s still nervous, jumpy—Jean gets it but also kind of wants to help ease him out of it. Just wants him to be comfortable.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, and Marco falls into an ominous silence that stretches a few seconds too long. “You can say no, there’s no pressure.”

“N-no, I—I mean yes, you can, but. Uh.” His right hand lifts from the outside of Jean’s hand to scratch anxiously at his nose. “I wanna kiss you all the time, and I’m just… getting used to finally being able to do that.”

“Just want you to be comfortable,” Jean whispers. He leans down so their foreheads are touching and waits for Marco to make the final move, slot their lips together and run his fingers through the overgrown undercut at the back of his head.

When Marco finally does, it is bliss.

A year of nothing but texts, Facebook messages, Skype calls, and reblogging each other’s selfies with increasingly gooey comments, and he _finally_ saved up enough cash for a flight to Los Angeles to be with the boy who’s consumed more and more of his heart every day. A week will never be enough to satisfy him, not fully, but the arms around him and the sweet taste of the lips he’s been so enamored with for months aids at least some of the need.

And of course, it’s right when Jean attempts to be _very_ suave and tuck Marco’s hair out of his face that the power flickers out and the room is lit with nothing but dark grey light from the one window.

And of _course_ , it catches him so off guard that he lets out a high-pitched yelp and careens off of Marco’s lap and onto the hard flooring with a loud thump that probably pisses off the people downstairs.

Marco doesn’t even attempt to mask his laughter when he leans over the edge of the beanbag to ask, barely coherent because he’s giggling like a child, if Jean is okay. So much for being anxious.

“I’m breaking up with you,” Jean murmurs petulantly as Marco vaults him back up from the ground, this time positioning him over his legs so he’s not quite straddling them as much as draped over them.

 _Boyfriend_ has been a word they’ve only edged around, but at this point, it’s as sure as the bursting butterflies in Jean’s stomach when Marco leans into him and brushes their noses together, innocent as possible.

“Nuh-uh,” Marco says childishly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Never ever.”

Jean smirks and steals a quick peck against his cheek. “You’re cute when you act like a five-year-old. Shockingly.”

“And you’re not when you’re whining about the rain like a three-year-old?”

“I take offe _EEEAHH_.”

The deafening clap of thunder that rings throughout the room doesn’t _just_ break them out of the bubble that made them temporarily forget that the power went out, as evidenced by Jean back on the floor again, this time dejectedly starfished out and groaning in equal measure at his sore ass and all of the dignity he’s given up in the past five minutes.

“Almost makes me miss the fucking bugs in Ohio,” he says flatly, watching Marco’s feet bypass him to check the light switches. “I thought people from California were supposed to, like, rejoice at the sight of rain like they hadn’t seen the water in fifty years.”

“Nah, it’s mostly an annoyance,” comes Marco’s voice from where he’s disappeared into the dinky living room of his tiny apartment. “Makes traffic ten times worse than it already is in LA, and then the Metro gets super crowded because no one wants to drive in it.”

“I take it back. Ohio is great, Ohio is lovely, Ohio is—I can’t keep this up.”

“Come out here!” Marco’s disembodied voice calls from the next room. “I found a couple old camping lanterns that still have some battery life.”

Jean groans something unintelligible that probably barely registers through the wall.

“Also I have marshmallows and chocolate _and_ a gas stovetop that I just have to light with a match.”

 _That_ gets Jean to pad quickly out to the living room-kitchen combo that’s really only separated by a bookshelf. Marco’s constructed a blanket nest in the middle of the floor, two plastic lanterns placed at the heart of it, and he’s standing in front of the stove concentrating _very_ hard on ripping open a package of graham crackers without crushing them.

In the end, half of the graham crackers are cracked in the wrong places, and Jean does a hell of a job at burning most of his marshmallows to a crisp, but they curl into the blanket nest and share stories and kisses until neither realizes that the power’s been back on for nearly an hour.


	3. day 3: hand to hold / vigil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for prompt #3: hand to hold/vigil!  
> takes place about a year before prompt #2
> 
>  **warning for minor character death,** and i'll be updating the tags accordingly, so keep safe  <3

Marco is only 19 years old the day his life changes permanently with one phone call.

The voice on the other end is one he’s heard a thousand times before, but never like this. Never choked with emotion, never barely coherent through gasping breaths and heavy tears.

“Marco,” Ymir finally says over the line—his favorite cousin, the girl he’s never associated with anything but his best, most hilarious memories before now. He wheels his desk chair away from his open laptop at her tone; procrastinating a paper can wait for whatever is troubling his cousin. Maybe she and her girlfriend broke up, or maybe she’s gotten into his aunt and uncle’s rum bottle again and found their Marley and Me DVD wherever he hid it and is feeling sentimental.

“I’m sorry,” Ymir gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Ymir,” he edges. “What’s going on?”

A short intake of breath. Ymir sounds shocked, but it could just be the connection. “You haven’t heard yet?”

“Heard what?” Marco’s voice is starting to shake now, and _no_ , there’s no way this could be that bad of news right? He just started his second year of college, he’s riding off a straight-A semester, he—he finally got into that painting class he’s been trying for two semesters to swing at least waitlist on. There’s no possible way, not at all—

“Marco,” Ymir says again, his name like a mantra to keep herself grounded. “Your parents were in a car accident this morning. They… didn’t make it. I-I thought someone told you.”

His heart falls into his stomach.

How does one react to that kind of news? A minute ago, he was a kid in his college dorm killing time on the internet because his biggest problem in life was that he didn’t want to write a paper for his psychology class. He had parents. He was a son. Now he’s a boy holding his cell phone to his ear like a vice, fingers trembling with each hitch of his cousin’s broken breath, hoping to whatever’s out there that this is an April Fool’s joke six months too late.

“N-no, I—I’ve been in class all day, I just got back to the dorm a few minutes ago. I-I had a bunch of m-missed calls when I got out, but I f-figured it was just your mom reminding me that Dad’s birthday is coming, and… and I didn’t answer, and—”

“Marco.” Ymir’s voice is more sure of itself now, cutting through his desperate ranting with enough softness to spring hot tears to his eyes. “I can be in San Diego in two hours if you need me.”

Her care pulls the first searing tear from his eye, and it cuts a hot trail down his cheek as it falls.

“No,” he says. “Be with your parents. I’ll… I can take a bus down, please s—You’re sure?”

Ymir’s grave nod is almost palpable through the phone line. “I wish I wasn’t. I can stay on the line with you that whole damn bus ride if you need me to.”

Marco doesn’t try to hide his sob—it’s there, it’s out, Ymir’s seen enough out of him to never judge him for crying. “If only phone batteries lasted that long,” he manages around a whimper. “Please tell your parents I love them a-and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Keep yourself safe, kid.”

He only hiccups a cry in response, but Ymir continues on. She’s steeled herself enough, but Marco can still hear the broken waver behind her words when she whispers into her phone, “I love you.”

Marco returns the sentiment with a hasty arm wiped over his eyes while the other packs anything that will fit into one duffel bag. He doesn’t even bother emailing his professors about his expected absences for the rest of the week before he’s rushing out of the dorm.

 

* * *

 

The bus ride from San Diego to Los Angeles takes approximately four hours, and as much as he’d like to talk with Ymir the whole time, to keep himself from being the lone teenager sobbing until it _hurts_ in the back of the bus, he’s running on three-quarters of a cell phone battery and no foreseeable way to charge it.

When the tears have subsided enough so that he can at least see semi-clearly again, Marco unlocks his phone, taps the Tumblr app, and types a quick, typo-addled text post, if only to keep his hands busy.

_won’t be on v ery much for a while... got the worst possible news and im on a bus back to la right now with limited phone battery life. i don’t even when i’ll be back at school, if i even want to go back @ this point. everythign is wrong and theres nothing i can even do about it and im s o lost and scared i dont know what’s goign to happen. see you all in a bit._

He locks his phone back up once more and tries not to notice that the last text message in his inbox is from his mother, just last night: _Love and miss you, mijo. Goodnight. <3_

 

* * *

 

The next days are torturous: long hours spent tucked away into his old bed, under his old covers that still smell like the laundry detergent his mom and dad could never agree on despite the fact that they’ve remained untouched since Marco last slept on them during summer vacation. Relatives and neighbors come and go, filling the apartment refrigerator with more casseroles than he’ll ever eat and the limited counter space with more vases of flowers than Marco, Ymir, or her parents have any idea what to do with.

They all ask about him; he can hear it through the thin walls: _How’s Marco holding up? Is he here? Does he want to come out and talk about it?_ like he’s still the same bubbly kid they knew ten years ago after all that’s happened in the last day.

Terribly. Yes, if only physically. No, no he does not, not in the slightest.

There’s only so much sleeping one person can do, though, before the four walls of a bedroom he’s only ever associated with his parents and their home start to get to him. Marco comes out only when he is certain that nobody is visiting, and even then not for much more than the two meals a day he can keep down without wanting to throw them back up. Ymir is uncharacteristically kind when he does poke his head out of his bedroom, offering a bone-crushing hug when she can tell that he needs one, and keeping her distance and offering small, material comforts instead—food and drinks and DVD’s from her place—when she knows that he doesn’t want to speak to anyone.

His aunt and uncle speak in hushed tones about funeral arrangements whenever he’s in the room. It’s the only time that Marco willingly agrees to leave the apartment and be around the people he’s been avoiding in the days he’s been back in the city, and even then, Ymir is at his side at all times to divert attention away from him when the tears threaten to spill from his eyes. He respectfully declines the offer to say a few words about his parents because he doesn’t trust his own voice not to crack and fill the entire church with the loud echoes of a lost, sobbing kid.

And so Marco sits in the church pews wearing the suit his parents bought him for senior prom, the only one he owns. It’s the wrong occasion entirely, and he cries for the look of pride on his mom’s face when she helped him fix his tie, the acceptance when his father met his boyfriend at the time with a kind smile and snapped enough pictures of the two of them to fill an entire album.

He cries for the way Ymir’s palm tucked into his trembles more than she’s ever let herself show before. He cries for the life he wanted to make for himself, for how badly he wanted his parents to watch him be the first Bodt to graduate college, how much he wanted them to sit in the front row and look on with happy, misty eyes when he got married.

All of that slips through his fingers when the pallbearers carry the coffins out of the church doors, to be confined to a 5x8 plot of land in a crowded cemetery for the rest of time.

 

* * *

 

Marco doesn’t change out of his suit once he gets back to the apartment after the funeral and candlelight vigil afterwards, just curls himself right back into bed, shoes and all, and falls asleep until the sky outside of the one window in his bedroom is growing dimmer and dimmer by the second. He still doesn’t stand up, only rolls onto his side to check his phone with the sick hope in his chest that maybe his mom will send another text to tell him she loves him.

There is no text message, only a notification from the Tumblr app that he has two messages in his inbox. With no urge to get up anytime soon, he taps on it and sees a vaguely familiar URL and icon, along with a short message.

 _steebrogers asked you:  
_ _hey. this is probably weird as hell because we’ve hardly ever talked but your post worried me i guess and you haven’t been on in a few days since so i really hope you’re ok. i’m not the best pep talker lol but if you need a listening ear i’ve got two of those (and an ask box and idk. a phone? texts?) (yea really REALLY bad pep talker) (i do hope ur doing well tho)_

 _steebrogers asked you:  
_ _OH and my name is jean btw_

It takes strength Marco doesn’t currently possess to sit up to type a response, but he manages to get into a leaning position to leave a message back in the person’s inbox after poking around their blog to make sure he’s got the right person. The bio is simple— _jean/18/bi boy from ohio (hold your laughter please)_ —and Marco vaguely recalls following him for his funny post during the collective internet meltdown that resulted from the announcement that a Captain America movie was being made.

 _You asked steebrogers:  
_ _Thank you so much for the message. It really means a lot. I uhhh just got back from my parents’ funeral and I’m kind of lost honestly and I have no idea how long ranting to you would take but if you’re willing, my number is 323-663-1234. (Also my name is Marco, nice to meet you, sorry I’m an absolute mess right now)_

It’s probably an idiotic move to give his number to an almost complete stranger that he knows nothing about other than his interest in Marvel comics, but loneliness is a hell of a drug. He’s desperate for something, conversation with a person who doesn’t hold the same expectations that Marco’s family does—that he’ll be the outgoing sunshine child he was as a child, when he still had parents.

His cell phone rings within a few minutes, and the voice on the other end is timid but strong.

“Hi, um, Marco?”

“Hi, Jean.”

The boy— _Jean_ —breathes a relieved half of a sigh on the other end. Marco can hear him shuffling around, and then he speaks again.

“So, that ear to listen… is here. I guess. _God_ , I’m an idiot, sorry.”

“Could use a hand to hold, honestly,” tumbles out of Marco’s mouth before he can even really register what he’s just said. “Um, I mean—”

“Don’t worry about it—you’re hurting, I get it,” Jean assures him. “You can, uh, pretend to hold my hand? If—god, that’s weird, isn’t it, we just met, I—I mean, if it makes you feel any better.”

For the first time he can recall in days, a fraction of a smile slips onto Marco’s face. “Okay,” he says. “I’m pretending to hold it. Ready for me to talk your ear off, stranger?”

“Fire away,” is Jean’s soft reply.

The sun is coming up on the horizon and Ymir’s spare charger has been hastily plugged into his phone by the time Marco finally gives into the urge to sleep. He’s out for a restful, solid eight hours, and when he wakes again in the early afternoon, another message is sitting in his inbox.

 _steebrogers asked you:  
_ _anytime you need a hand to hold again, feel free :)_


End file.
